I never thought I'd be the kind of guy that gets hung up on superficial stuff and design issues. I figure I'm kind of pragmatic and practical in my tastes.

But I can't fucking stand KDE 4. It's ugly, disorganized, inconsistent, full of pointless ornamentation, and byzantine.
I'm not even talking about nit-picky things like typography, though others have. The textures, color palette, and overall gimmicky visual and animation choices just look painful when they're all mashed together. It's like something took a bunch of disparate interface and graphic design ideas, glued them all onto a whiteboard, stood back, and said "Yep, that's our interface!" It makes In comparison, out-of-the-box Gnome 3 looks like something Steve Jobs designed:

(not mine, VBox gave me a blank screenshot with only the menu up top visible)

And it even makes default Xfce, feet planted firmly in the year 2000, at least look as clean as its codebase:

For all of Qt's prowess in making great interfaces, the default KDE "look" makes GTK-based environments seem downright gorgeous, refined, or elegant! That just should not happen.
At the very least they need to overhaul the default Oxygen theme for more consistency. Why THAT piece of crap is the default theme that they ship with everything I'll never know.

I get that part of the appeal of KDE as a GUI environment is that there are tons of options to configure, tweak, and customize. Sure, it's more powerful. It has a lot of eyecandy built in without having to install anything extra. But that's only hindered when you have obscure options spread out over more than one tweak screen. For all the flak that GNOME gets (even going back to 2.x) over removing options and dumbed-down graphical tweaking tools, at least their "sane by default" approach works to make it less painful and reduce your NEED to change things! I just started using Gnome 3 a few days ago and I have felt zero urge to mess with the theme or adjust any interface settings. When I started up KDE 4 my first thought was "how can I make this look bearable?" It's like shopping for a family sedan and all the cars on the lot are plastered with decals, painted orange, and decked out with neon undercar lighting.

I'm not even a minimalist/modernist/BlankWhiteSpacesAndSansFontist when it comes to graphic design, and even I know their approach needs to be cleaner and less cluttered. It's like they looked at Windows XP, Mac OS 10.1 and said that the two could be brought together if only you put enough gloss and neon lights over everything. There are plenty of nicer themes out there they could just grab and package with it, but they choose not to! People have made themes and customized the interface to look and work better, even beautifully. But what ships by default is enough to turn people away before they can even think of reskinning it, and who could blame them? I almost want to give up on it. I don't even known how you can fix the weird menu decisions and buried configuration options with just a theme. That's a usability problem more than a visual one.
Speaking of usability, typical interactions Gnome 3 are based around things like the Super key, so just as in Windows 7 you can simply hit the button and type to bring up an application or a file. Xfce is basically the pre-Vista Windows approach, but with more niceties in terms of management and menu selection. It's familiar and accessible. KDE just gets in my way. The Super key does nothing by default, but all the tools and programs are hidden behind a few menu layers that don't make it easy to find and activate them. There's no navigating a menu by mouse-over, the categories can be vague, and sometimes the placement of a feature inside a menu makes no sense. I'm sure you can tweak these things somehow, but again why make the user jump through these hoops in the first place?

I want to like KDE and I'll be spending some time making it look and behave the way I'd like. But they sure don't make it a pleasure to get in and drive.

Joined: 09 Jul 2006Posts: 9702Location: I have to be somewhere? ::runs around frantically::

Posted: Fri May 31, 2013 12:48 am Post subject:

Sorry - I was having a terribly shitty day. So I ran on the elliptical for 20 mins which is harder than it looks if you refuse to bounce and you maintain a single speed. Then I lifted weights.

And then I had a popsicle._________________Before God created Las he pondered on all the aspects a woman might have, he considered which ones would look good super-inflated and which ones to leave alone.
After much deliberation he gave her a giant comfort zone. - Michael

popsicles are good. hopefully it helped make up for the rest of the day.

and drat - i was going to go hit the treadmill after work, but now it's later that it should be, and i have to go feed my neighbor's cats. (mine too, of course, but they are used to eating whenever i get home.)_________________aka: neverscared!

Joined: 09 Jul 2006Posts: 9702Location: I have to be somewhere? ::runs around frantically::

Posted: Fri May 31, 2013 1:32 am Post subject:

The elliptical is easier on my weird weak muscles by forcing a smooth motion. I rather hate running._________________Before God created Las he pondered on all the aspects a woman might have, he considered which ones would look good super-inflated and which ones to leave alone.
After much deliberation he gave her a giant comfort zone. - Michael

i don't do running - i walk briskly. my doctor says i should run (he's a runner)....maybe if i lose enough weight i will do it, but really, it just doesn't seem that pleasant._________________aka: neverscared!

Joined: 09 Jul 2006Posts: 9702Location: I have to be somewhere? ::runs around frantically::

Posted: Fri May 31, 2013 1:43 am Post subject:

Even when I was in pretty great shape, I loathed running. I'd rather do steps. I like active muscle building exercises._________________Before God created Las he pondered on all the aspects a woman might have, he considered which ones would look good super-inflated and which ones to leave alone.
After much deliberation he gave her a giant comfort zone. - Michael

I like the idea of running... getting to places under my own power quickly... but the actual practice of running is not very fun. Sometimes, occasionally, I'll feel really good after a run. And if I'm anxious or pissed off it's a great stress reliever. But I'd rather ride my bike... which means I should get my bike fixed up._________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

I hate running with a fiery burning passion. It's probably a throwback to when I was growing up and one of my feet was fucked up (apparently sometimes legs grow at different rates! It's deeply unpleasant and causes the arch in one foot to collapse slowly and painfully.)

Even now that my feet are normal again I still hate it. Part of the problem may just be that the out of breath feeling makes me kinda freak out. I honestly don't know how people can get to that stage and not feel like they're going to die._________________Samsally the GrayAce

Joined: 09 Jul 2006Posts: 9702Location: I have to be somewhere? ::runs around frantically::

Posted: Fri May 31, 2013 2:57 am Post subject:

Welcome to exercise! You just keep moving, even if you slow down, and breathe nice and deep._________________Before God created Las he pondered on all the aspects a woman might have, he considered which ones would look good super-inflated and which ones to leave alone.
After much deliberation he gave her a giant comfort zone. - Michael

Don't get me wrong, I was in TKD for like, a year or so?... no hadta be longer, I made it to purple belt. I get that it's just what happens, but no matter how many times I do it, I just never stop hating it._________________Samsally the GrayAce

I can't increase my endurance so it's a moot point. I've been taking the same 5 flights of steps for 6 years now, winded at the top every time, some days it's so bad that last flight is terrible. Running was... difficult. I could make it half a mile before my chest started burning, and by 3/4 mile things started getting blurry.

Hooray for blood cells that don't transfer oxygen as well! On the plus side, immune to Malaria.